Conventional bullet defeating body armors protect the user's chest and back. Protection is normally good when the user is standing erect and facing the threat or in the case of body armor with a back plate, when threat is directly to the rear. A user, with a rifle, normally returns fire from the prone position or from behind a protective structure. The prone position places the chest plate on the ground and the back plate up in the air rendering them relatively useless with respect to the threat direction. When firing from behind a protected structure, the user is exposed to bullets above the chest plate. Conventional body armors are ineffective to bullets above the top of the chest plate. This deficiency in conventional body armor is critical because in a direct fire situation where the soldier or law enforcement officer must return fire from a fighting position hoping to hit the enemy before he himself is wounded.
Most conventional body armors require substantial weight to stop a bullet and absorb the bullet's residual energy. Extremity protection has been manufactured with the concept of stopping light fragments. Extremity armors are not designed to stop bullets because the weight required to stop bullets would weigh down the individual to the point that his arms and legs would be ineffective due to the significant weight.